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Writing in changing places – Concepts of being at home

I once asked my mentor how he defines home, and he said: “Home is where you hang your hat.” I pondered his words for a moment, and remembered that I had also read somewhere that home is where your heart is. Can one’s heart be in just one place though? Can one confine one’s heart? I think home can be the place where one lives, home may also be the place where one has lived before and has found peace and joy. Home may also be a place one longs for. Some people consider home to be a place where one can find love, protection, acceptance, security, peace, happiness, joy and a sense of belonging.

When I was a little girl, my Dad used to tease my Mom about the concept of ‘home’. Whenever my Mom would go to visit my maternal grandparents, she would say that she was going home, and my father would ask her: “What do you call the place you are now departing from?” “Home”, my mother would respond easily. I am sure that for her, it was no trouble to regard both places as ‘home’.

For the past eight years, I have moved a lot and found myself referring to many places as home. Having been born and raised in Uganda, to me, home was one physical location. Home was a place in the southwestern part of Uganda where my parents lived, where I was born and where I spent most of my formative years. Home was the place where I would go during school vacations. Home was the place where I spent most of my time throughout the year. Home was where my parents and siblings all gathered for Christmas and Easter holidays. Home was a place where I knew I had a room and a bed. That was home to me.

However, this place I once called home, although I still have a room and a bed there, I have not lived in for the past sixteen or so years. The concept of home has changed for me. I have moved a lot; for studies, for work, and for my writing. Many times I have joked with friends and colleagues who have asked me where home is; and I have told them that I am “homeless”.

For us as writers, this kind of movement and changing of places affects the way we approach our work, and the world. I believe that moving and living in different places allows us to see things differently, to view our surroundings through many and different lenses. If we are open and receptive, moving and living in different places allows us to imagine and approach our work in new ways. There is value in having a base, a place one is confident to call home, but there is as much value in moving and living in different places, and making ‘homes’ wherever one finds oneself. I think what has been valuable for me is to be able to look back and write about places I have been to. The value here is being able to look at a place or situation from the outside angle. Moving and living in different places allows us to see those places and ourselves both from the inside as well as from the outside.

Some writers have rituals that they do before they write, and throughout the whole writing process. Some writers are very particular about how their writing space needs to look like, which direction the desk should face (if they are using a desk), the shape of the chair or couch they sit on to write. I know that for me, I like to write in a room that has a window, and that my writing table needs to face the window, and my back towards the entrance in most cases. However, I have also found myself writing in rooms and places that sometimes have no windows or a desk, and I know that this influences what I am writing about. I will find myself sneaking my writing setting into the piece that I am working on. Physical locations, seasons, affect the way we write. Uganda has a fantastic climate. It is warm; some months can be hot, but not unbearable. Some parts of the country are quite chilly. The sun rises at 6:30am or 7:00am and sets at 6:30pm or 7pm all year round. We have two seasons, a dry season and a rainy season. When I lived in New York, the extremity of the weather shocked me, and I found these experiences sneaking into my writing. And I wondered whether I would have ever been able to write about them had I lived in Uganda my whole life, probably not.

I remember when I wrote one of my plays, “Cooking Oil”, I was a student in California. That was the first time in my life to live outside of my home country. When I was still living in Uganda, I had read about and almost internalized the corruption that was bringing my country to her knees. I had never really thought about what my personal and artistic response to this corruption pandemic could look like. However, studying in the US made me look more analytically at the US and European relations with the so called ‘developing world’, and I started wondering whether the unregulated aid for this ‘developing world’ did not in its own way contribute to the cancer of corruption. Maybe, had I not lived in the US, it would have been unlikely that I would have been very curious about the US relations with my own country. Maybe, I would have written a completely different play. Maybe, it would have only been an ‘indictment’ on the clichéd ‘corrupt African leaders’. Living in the US propelled me to question personal- as well as trans-Atlantic relationships.

Likewise, I have discovered that moving and living in different places compels one to think and write about a culture, a people other than what one knows or is used to; thus, writing about the ‘other’ (I have often wondered whether there is actually such a thing as ‘the other’). But, I have also asked myself how much I can write about a place that I have lived in for a short time only. There can be many inspiring things to write about; the culture, the people, daily experiences, thrills and fears. Even if one has lived in a place for some longer time, the questions that still linger in my mind are; how can one be honest and sensitive at the same time while writing about the ‘other’? How can a writer explore new grounds and be open minded without at the same time appearing prejudice? Is that even possible? If a writer is to write from their gut, do they even need to think about these things?

For the Internet generation of writers, we can also create virtual homes. Whether we like it or not, the Internet has shrunk our world. Home may not necessarily have to be a physical location. Home can be where one has the tools needed for writing; whether these are a notebook, desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone or a typewriter, or whether these are love, peace, chaos, quietness, or noise. Although, there may be comfort and a sense of security in the ‘home’ concept, I think there is also something thrilling for a writer in knowing that they can write anywhere, anytime, and that they can be inspired by their sense of ‘homelessness’.

Comments

Dear Deborah Asiimwe, I am allowed very much enthusiastically by this project, the wonderfully varied insights into very different social environments and manners of writing like yours and greet with a quotation of the author Sibylle Berg: „At home is where one reads obituaries. “ I held this first for a (successful) joke – but I think, it is more than this . . .

Hello Jutta Reichelt,
Thank you very much for your comment, and thank you for sharing Sibylle Berg quotation. I could not help but chuckle after reading it. Home being a place where one reads “obituaries” may sound very funny, but I think you are right, there is another layer of meaning to it. The act of reading obituaries in itself has a certain level of steadiness and calmness it brings, and these could be associated with the concept of home.

Thank you for this elaborate and thought-provoking text, Deborah (can you also let us know who is the author of these magnificent and intriguing images, please). Concerning the ‘place slippage’ or what you called ‘places sneaking into writing’: I am returned to the condition of experience (or Merleau Ponty’s bodies knowing the world). It is interesting that you say that some stories would have never uttered themselves into existence had you not visited certain places (here, how many stories hang as clippings from roofs and skies and futures?!?) If moving has bred (new) stories then it has a voice on its own (for me always in tune with some form and extent of nostalgia and melancholy). Yet, having left ‘my’ home almost ten years ago I could not fixate it into its corporeality (instead, I like to think of it as a condition, a moment, the most bare, intimate and elemental part of a given atmosphere: ‘“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home” Faulkner pens it down.) Therefore, I agree that places make their entries no matter how hard one tries to extricate imagination from their (and its) closures. Your text sounds rather positive, do you regret sometimes this ‘world’s homelessness’?

Very well put, Mariya Nikolova! Thank you for your comments and questions, and for touching on Merleau Ponty’s philosophy as well as sharing a quote from William Faulkner. My apologies for a tardy response. As Nikolas mentions below, I have been moving homes again, and I am currently trying to settle into “my new home”. I agree, moving has a voice of its own. I think that moving in itself is a story, and because of that, it has taken on a character of its own, and therefore its own distinct voice.
This “world’s homelessness” within the context of moving places, is a state of mind I believe. Do I regret it? I am fascinated by it. I am fascinated by the idea of departing, and arriving, and departing again. I am fascinated by how places have the capacity to embrace or be rejected. I am fascinated by stories that are born out of these experiences.
Thank you again for your deep thoughts on this subject!

Thank you for this poetic and invigorating response! I like the fact that you see the capacity of places in a positive light; I think I don’t have this quality and flood myself with imagining spaces which incapacitate (politically, socially) and start off from there (my thoughts I mean)

I remember coming back to Germany after one year of civil service in Uganda, wondering where all the people are. In rural areas the streets, the sidewalks, whole villages feel empty compared to the countryside in Uganda. My home where I grew up, went to school and had a bed all of a sudden felt unfamiliar, not “Home” to me. It’s strange and interesting when you start seeing the familiar inside from the outside, especially as a writer. Maybe you do not have to leave your home country and come back again to have this kind of feeling. A lot of literature deals with unfamiliarity in the so called familiar ground. But changing places maybe can help you gaining a certain kind of distance towards the material you are writing on. There is a huge potential of narration, language creativity and fun in the ability to see familiar grounds from outside. As a German you understand what I mean by watching Tom Hanks talking about the German Autobahn at the David Letterman Show:

Deborah is actually changing her place once again by taking a plane to Germany right now. But soon she will be on her desk again to answer your questions. For now: The images are each linked to this great artist: http://www.iconsofametropolis.com/the-artworks/

You can also check incoming comments on the right side of Deborah’s Input throughout this week – thats where the writers push her thoughts further. You are welcome to interact in these discussions too!

I relate a lot with what Mariya said ” If moving has bred (new) stories then it has a voice on its own (for me always in tune with some form and extent of nostalgia and melancholy)”.

I think regardless the number of times spaces change, there is always an anchor into the one place that we call home and this affects our writing because new spaces will be viewed in some sort of relation to home.

When Deborah writes the play, I believe she is looking at home in a comparison to where she has lived. And home may not neccessarily be a good place; of good memories; I think it is a place that has a Genesis/Eden factor about it. A place we instinctively knew. A place we grew up or were formed in.

” If a writer is to write from their gut, do they even need to think about these things?”

This is an important question. I would like to know what everyone else thinks.

Debs, so true! I wonder if homelessness can be a choice. If, perhaps we don’t find a place with love, warmth and comfort, we feel we are homeless. Home suggests comfort and contentment and yet the world moves us to states of restlessness as well, we’re always searching. I wonder, when do we ever find what we’re searching for? I also believe that wide travel enables us to be more respectful and mindful of others and to realize the universe belongs to a billion others and to be good stewards of the earth. Often, it’s my internal reaction to these external truths that keeps me writing.

Thanks, Bev! I think we are conditioned to associate great and positive things with the concept of home. I agree with Mariya. Home is a paradox, and that is not a terrible thing. I think if we were to “find” what we are “searching” for, we would not be writing anymore. Everyday, I am reminded that the world is bigger than my neighborhood, than my street, than anything my brain can contain. There is joy and restlessness in knowing that.

I agree that traveling expands the vastness which pushes under ribcages, and minds, and some stories, too. But I cannot say that home is always a place of well-being; rather a space of being itself (Camus would exclaim here ‘“If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there.” ). As much as I am devoted to what is contained in the noun/verb/adjective ‘home’ I cannot escape its immanence and burden: it’s the place in which we cease to be strangers; it is a ‚when’ of the world resonating its pulse in ours; there: we matter; we are; broken or uncut, with bruises and beating wings, and depths of value and being lost-s. Thus, home is (inevitably) in opposition with what isn’t there and the ‘wheres’ which don’t contain us; forget us, and hell us too. Perhaps, this is a part of home’s idealistic connotation: it implies that we are never absent; that the wooden floor still draws circles and circles of rainbows with the footsteps my five-year-old self; that there is a face to reflect my patches of laughter (my mother’s or mirrored or someone whose name I have forgotten); and too, I could go back and ‘be’ for the trace of my being still rests in my grandmother’s chair. Here, if I think of home I wouldn’t want to neglect the fact that every idea and imagination of it is intimately and ultimately connected to me; in or out of it, my being births it and lets it die, and too re-lives it and re-leaves it a thousand times

As with Mariya, Bremen is my “second home”, with the difference that I left my first one – Ireland – not ten, but forty years ago. Since then I have lived in two communities and two languages – the language of my parents and the language of my wife and children. This means, of course, that I not only have two homes, which I take to be a great enrichment of my life and especially my writing, but also two “others”. On the one hand, flying into Belfast over small green fields is flying home, but so is returning to Bremen – you can actually see our house from the plane as it lands. On the other hand, however, as I think Nikolas has pointed out elsewhere, this “otherness” – the stranger’s view – is vital to writers. It is, in my opinion, only by seeing the familiar as “other” that we can write in an original way. So I’m very grateful to my two homes and my two “others”.

Hi Ian, do you think you say the same things in English and in German? Does something get lost in-between? And if so, could fragments of personality/character be translated and mis-translated in such ‘double existence’? I ask you this because I feel how different I ‘sound’ (with regards not merely to the acoustic traits but also the meaning of my articulations) while ‘translating’ myself. I will be very interested to know what you think

Dear Mariya, Before I reply directly, I just want to say how much I am enjoying this thread; thanks, Deborah, for initiating it. Yes, Mariya, my voice, my music and my images are very different in English and German; in some ways I’m two different writers. As it happens, today I have been translating an English poem into German prose. It contains the line, “Regret strokes my skin like nettle feathers”, a line I was quite pleased with. Yet, however hard I try to get a decent translation, it ends up as pure kitsch in German. It may (?) have something to do with the fact that German is a much more explicit, much less ambiguous language (and culture). (Compare the very explicit translations of very ambivalent English-language film titles.) Hm, what do you think?

Thank you, Ian! I am glad that Mariya asked the question above.
English is not my first language, and I grew up in a home where two languages were spoken, and at school we were forced to speak English. I grew up dancing between three languages. In my writing life, and of course with moving places, I have found the languages of my childhood forcing themselves to the forefront of the way I tell stories, and I have often wondered whether I am a “different” writer depending on the language I am thinking in at that time. Thank you for sharing your experience.

I followed your talk about writing in different languages. Thank you so much for this inspiring discussion. I have a lot of respect for writers, who are able to write in different languages. For me, the biggest challenge of this project is: to write all my texts in English. I guess, my writing is getting much simpler now. Usually, when I write in German, I´m very strict with my style, with the use of adjectives, sentence-structure, repetitions, punctuation, rhythm and so on. Now, the problems are more basic. I have to think a lot about grammar, I´m looking for words all the time, I have to think about phrases I love in German, but I´m not sure if it is possible to translate them into English, or if it just doesn’t make any sense.

Beyond that, I have to take the risk that I´m going to publish a text in this blog where other people could discover mistakes I haven’t recognized as such. Usually, I am very strict with that too. Even if I have finished my texts, I read them again and again before I publish them (there could be a very tiny mistake hiding anywhere). To be honest, it annoys me every time I read a published text of mine and I discover a misspelling or a comma in the wrong place.

What about you? In all the languages you use do you have the same strict rules when you write a text? Is there one language, you feel the most comfortable with? Is there anything special you like more when writing in German, English, Bulgarian or Swahili? Is there anything you miss in one of these languages, if you compare it to the others?

Good morning, Jens, thank you for raising the question of grammar. I guess I have always been fascinated by experimental attempts to exit the closures of language but ever since stumbling upon the radical statements (in both political and ethical sense) of NourbeSe Philip this has shot fire up and in and directs much of my academic and creative work. So, grammar is a concept I think about a lot (and try not to think at the same time). Of course, breaking grammar in Philip’s work is a political earthquake. As for me, I do feel the burden of language and sometimes feel claustrophobic having to express myself in and within one (something which has to do probably with the fact that I learn and unlearn in English (not my mother tongue), live in German (‘y’ deliberately omitted; not my mother tongue) and hurt in Bulgarian (or what is left of my mother tongue)). This spills on my work, of course (here, an example: https://soundcloud.com/mariya-dimitrova-nikolova/cutmp3 ) there are rougher erasures which I overcome at the moment but basically my love for writing (and performing) slam, and poetry as a whole is breaking on its self. It will be very interesting to hear whether Ian and Deborah experience similar contradictions

Hello Jens,
There are number of things that you have touched on, that resonate with me. I notice that when I am writing in Runyankore which is my first language, I am very strict the way I use it. The way the rhythm of it sounds, its poetry and the flow of the words. I also find myself using several words/expressions until I get what feels and sounds right. What is interesting though is that, once I feel I have got everything right, I am not afraid to go back into the text and break the rules of the language. This is also true for the other languages spoken in Uganda that I sometimes bring into my writing. For the English language, especially when it is creative writing, I am mainly concerned with where the story is set, and the characters I am writing about. In most cases, my characters will guide on how to use the language because their speech patterns, their background and who they are will really determine on how they speak. I want to say that I am not afraid to break rules when dealing with creative writing. However, like you I get obsessed with getting EVERYTHING “right” when I am dealing with other kinds of writing that are none-creative.
For me, when it comes to language, I think there are several writers residing in me depending on what I am writing.

Hello Mariya,
I forgot to say thank you for mentioning NourbeSe Philip. I´m not familiar with her work, but what you mentioned and what I read about her work sounds very interesting. Even this tiny example, I found on wikipedia I like:
“… and English is / my mother tongue / is / my father tongue / is a foreign lan lan lang / language / l/anguish / anguish…”
Also, thank you for the link to an example of your own work. I enjoyed listening to the audio clip. So, you write poems and perform them on slams regularly? And: Do you have any favourite spoken word artists?

Hello Deborah,
Thank you so much for sharing your experiences. I´m fascinated by your opportunities to work with all these languages. Yes, you´re right, you have to distinguish between creative writing and non-creative. To think about grammar rules and spelling during the creative process would block your creativity. And I guess, there might be several writers residing in me, too.

Hi Jens, thanks for taking the time to read/listen to these things. Philip is grandiose, so as many people get to know her work, as many worlds will collapse, and that is for a good reason. I perform my slam pieces, yes, but only if the whole slam is held in English (otherwise, I write for some surrealist’s blogs and magazines but only to avoid spilling my monsters to random people in the street; slamming bursts to the same effect, then night comes, and night comes again, and I can sleep. Monster-less)

Dear Ian, thank you, once again you draw a field with impossible flowers. Being two writers at once, yes, what an inner contrast, what a great misery and bliss! I agree with you, some ideas cannot be translated (and indeed, what a beautiful line). I don’t know whether this has to do with German’s explicit physique, i.e. that the dichotomy happens merely within language itself. I have different things to say in English, different in Bulgarian, too, which, I believe, has nothing to do with the fact that more people would understand me (if they!) in the first, and less in the second. Here, of course, I cannot omit the often overwhelming touch to texts such as Ette’s ‘ZwischenWeltenSchreiben: Literaturen ohne festen Wohnsitz’ or some, albeit puzzling, of Bhabha’s. Perhaps, the more apparent the contradictions and edges of split spaces (internal, primarily) become, the closer and yet further one gets to their inert and ‘translatable’ origin-territories. One is here, and there, and nowhere in particular; and too, joins these spaces with the distressing compulsion of imagination. As Y. Roshi said: ‘the fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there’. Perhaps, being these two writers you are the writer you yearned to be deep down and up high.

Thanks, Deborah, and thanks to everybody fueling this interesting discussion on home and writing. Before sharing a few thoughts of mine with you, I would like to quote a passage from the poem “Counterpoint”, written by the famous Palestian poet Mahmoud Darwish. This poem depicts a lyrical dialogue between him and Edward Said, the postcolonial scholar and author of “Orientalism” and “Cultural imperialism”, and to me, these lines perfectly fit into our discussion of writing under the tensions of moving, exile and so-called “otherness” in a foreign context.

“On the wind, he walks,
and in the wind, he knows who he is.
The wind has no roof; the wind has no house,
the wind is a compass pointing to the stranger’s North.

He says: I am from there. I am from here.
I am not there and I am not here.
I have two names, which meet and part,
and I have two languages.
I forget which of them I dream in.
I have English for writing, obedient in words.
I have also a language in which heaven speaks to Jerusalem:
silver-stressed, and it does not obey!

I said: And identity?
He said: Defense of the person. Identity is the daughter of birth,
but in the end, the invention of its owner,
not an heirloom from the past.
I am manifold. (…)
So carry your home country wherever you go. (…)

He loves a country, and travels from it.
He loves traveling to anything,
and in free travel between cultures,
those who study human essence
may find space enough for all.”

As Deborah mentions, the process of “making homes” and “finding oneself” in different contexts is an essential part of writing and living under the conditions of traveling and moving. The dynamics of distance push the writer to reflect or even change his or her perspectives and attitudes, the crossing of social and environmental limitations also means to shake the “normality” one got used to.

As writing can be understood as a mode of perception and reflection, as a product of interaction with and forming of the certain reality one is facing, each change of place causes a fundamental change of text.

The privilege to move freely between cultures and contexts, as described in the poem, enables a person to experience a multiplicity of perspectives, writings and homes, too. As much as identity can be multiple, home can be as such.

I think, a writer is lucky to have an additional privilege: By writing texts, she can find herself more easily and settle down through her well-known rituals of writing. In that sense, making homes could mean: writing homes.

When I read Deborahs fascinating input and all the inspiring comments about the concept of home and homelessness. I realized (for the second time), that I for myself don’t feel homelessness any more. When I started studying in Essen many years ago, it was never my home. On the one hand it was maybe still the small-town, where I grew up, where my family lived (and still lives) and where l had a lot friends. But, on the other hand it wasn´t, because that was not the place where I wanted to be any more. I was looking for a new place, and by chance I ended up in Bremen. Now I’ve been living here for 13 years and each year Bremen becomes more and more my home.

A few weeks ago after a party, it was nighttime. I was walking along the river, the moon was shining and I saw this little bridge. This bridge is very close to my flat, and suddenly I was overwhelmed by the emotion of coming home. I realized – in this intensity maybe for the first time –, that I have found a place, where I feel at home.

I really love the city of Bremen. In my little flat with the view of the sky and the river near by and all the lovely places and people around, all together make me feel at home. Even though I can write anywhere (I love to write while I´m traveling, sitting by the river or drinking a cappuccino in a coffee shop), my flat is the place where I write the most and where I finish my stories. My flat is my cozy cell. Here are all my books, my desk, my notebooks, my big window, my records, my sofa, my tea and my coffee machine to make a cappuccino. But, it´s not just a physical location with all that stuff, it´s more. Maybe it is what the sentence in Deborahs text describes: “a place where one can find love, protection, acceptance, security, peace, happiness, joy and a sense of belonging.“

Beverley, I don´t know if homelessness can be a choice, but I guess it takes a bit of luck to find a place where you feel at home. I am thankful for having this place, but sometimes I ask my self, if I´m getting too comfortable. In these moments, I think about going anywhere else to find new inspiration, because as all of you said traveling or living in different places has an inspiring influence on the way we think and write, it expands our horizon. However, to be honest, in the end I always reach the point where I realize that I don´t want to give up my home.

Is “homelessness” the zeitgeist of our times? In her book “The New World Literature”, the German critic Sigrid Loeffler has argued that all the great post-1945 literature has been one of dislocation, hybrid personalities and so on. I agree with Jens (and not just about Bremen, which I also love!) that home is important, especially for writing. I, too, can – and do – write anywhere. But it always temporary, somehow still in the air, till I get home and type it up in my computer at home. P.S. With me, it’s Darjeeling, Jens, not cappuccino.

I guess the importance of something like a home for the process of writing has to do with really inhabiting a place, which means: leaving the common roads in your town, getting to know the stories of the place. Back in the days when I was living down south, I used to work in a shelter for homeless people (actually: the “real” homeless ones, not the metaphorical homeless). Knowing this small parallel world in my hometown had a big influence on my writing for a long time, because suddenly I understood, that there is a lot going on of which I didn’t knew for a long time, a completely different daily routine, a “sub-system”, which functioned according to its own rules. Not only did it change my view on society as a whole, but also my perspective on living in a city and telling stories about it.
Besides that, the word “home”, especially the german translation “Heimat” always makes me feel a bit uneasy. It makes me think not of the individual “home” but of the collective one, which is a battlefield for ideology still. So I guess I have something like a functional concept of home. But on the other hand I have to acknowledge that my writing, the images that come to my mind and the topics of my stories are all heavy influenced by the places I inhabit, especially the one I grew up.

you know the topic of “writing the other” is very important for my work too. I’m sitting on a novel about a german volunteer and an ugandan teenager who work and life with a japanese NGO and try to grow up in this transcultural mess. Reading you lines it seems there is a general problem in writing about the other, no matter where you are coming from. But writing about Uganda from a western point of view makes it, I think, even more complicated. Maybe even impossible. No matter the language, the topics or perspectives you choose. Since there is a western history (and presence) of reduced representation, “othering” and paternalism towards the african countries (greetings “Africa is a country”) you are on principal guilty to write another white and western novel about “Africa” that nobody is asking for. There is power of political construction. But there is power of aesthetic construction too. So maybe it is possible to write about “the other”. But certainly not without being guilty.
In my novel I try to write about this guilt. I do not try to write a novel. I rather try to throw a novel away.
In her “Talks on Writing Prose” Norah Bossong says: “We try to do evereything in a way that we can avoid feeling guilty about it. It is what has become the ‘good life’ here or let’s say the ‘virtuous life’.” I think she nailed it. The point is to remain guilty. No matter how often you admit the fact.

Or is that stupid? Are we done with that “Crises of Representation” by now? What do you think, Deborah? Last year in Uganda writers told me they are looking forward to read my novel, to see their very own country with eyes from the outside. And Ugandan writer Joel Benjamin Ntwatwa claims on Nyana Kakoma’s Blog “Sooo many stories”: “Art is art. The ongoing debate about what constitutes African literature and an African writer is unnecessary. When you ask me what constitutes African literature, I feel that already you have tried to make literature your slave. Should it not be literature that talks about African issues, or European issues or Gypsy issues? Why must art have a race? And why must the artist be forced to fit into that race? Why can’t literature simply be a partner or a worker? And not a slave? If I wrote poetry drenched with the ideals of Western Capitalism, would it make me an American poet? If I wrote with the mind of a Gazan citizen, would it make me a Gazan poet? Would my poetry be accepted as Gazan literature? Art can be used to favour your cause but should not be enslaved to it.”

First: as it is my first comment I have to say that the high leveled speed of response in this blog is impressive(!); and second: Thank you Nikolas for the possibility to tie in with this.
Our small Bremen-Group was talking about Ronalds ‘Walls and Borders’ in December at Bremen University, as one of us noticed that she was totally surprised as she realized that she is not addressed in this text. The text mentions physical, political and language borders she (and some others including me) never really thought about before, especially not about their meanings and importance for migration and diaspora in east africa. She/we (some of us) felt not addressed as white europeans/germans because of the naturalness the text speaks about these borders, not wasting any thought on explaining them to strangers. This naturalness of stating problems around these borders as normal as any other experiences with borders, created a gap in her/our perception, a gap between her/us and the text. This as an example – because it is this kind of gap that is one of the most interesting phenomena to me in reading, or to get in touch with a text. It is a gap that means not-understanding, that includes the impression of an ‘other’, something that is obviously different than what I expected. And by perceiving this obviousness I am able to talk about my so far hidden expectations (on the text). I love exploring such gaps, first: because the moments I can take a hold of such a gap are very rare but remarkable, second: they are one strange way to start a transcultural reading – transcultural reading as a method that involves parts of not understanding… something. I think it is quite a challenge not to bridge or fill such gaps (with ignorance, own thoughts…), but to take them as relevant pieces for… I’m losing concentration.
But I’m writing this because I have a rough concept in mind of what a transcultural reading can be as a method or a mode of reading, but also, with this concept in mind, I always wondered ‘Tom, what could be a transcultural mode of writing?’. As I read your lines ‘In my novel I try to write about this guilt. I do not try to write a novel. I rather try to throw a novel away.’ I got something like a brief glimpse of a that. Maybe because it reminds me of a simultaneously condensing (constituting…?) and crumbling (shattering…?) mosaic…
I’m looking forward to get a look at the first chapter of your novel! Do you experiment with the type face of your novel to get your efforts implemented?

I hope it is ok with you, that my comment is not a direct answer to your question(s).

thank you so much for your reply. You say it is the gap, the not understanding, that is one of the most interesting things to you in reading. I also like the opposite. When I read a book by a so called foreign writer about a so called foreign culture. And realise the we have a lot in common. That I do understand the desires of the characters. That the conflicts and topics of a story can easily be found find in my own – so called familiar – life. To be outright: I like both. When there is understanding and not understanding at the same time. Bridges and gaps. When I find it hard to bear the contradictions. For me this could be the space of transcultural reading and writing.

For me – there is a reason for not calling this blog “Bremen & Kampala – spaces of intercultural writing”. Since cultures – in my experience – are no static bubbles, not separated from each other, trying to “inter”act to overcome their differences and to discover their commonalities. I don’t know which shape “transculture” has. Maybe it’s a network or a bunch of strings. Maybe it has a structure similar to the infrastructure of the internet. Maybe it’s a lot of bubbles. Millions of bubbles. All of them cross-linked and influenced and permeated. Not cultures anymore. Maybe individuals. Also bade of bubbles, full of differences and similarities and everything in between at the same time.

Sometime I try to look at this whole “writing the other” topic by putting the definition of culture into focus. One could say: “No, it’s completely not possible to write about the other! The other is too foreign!” His definition of cultures may be (over) static. There is no movement between cultures. There is foreignness on this side and familiarity on the other side. Now, one could say: “Yes, it’s completely possible to write about the other! The other is just like us!” His definition of cultures may be (over) dynamic. There are no differences between cultures. We are all the same.

In my writing I try to find a way between these (over) static and (over) dynamic definitions of cultures. To put the word “culture” at least in bracket. Or putting the word “trans” in front of it. Finding out what this whole thing looks like.

Nikolas, “writing the other” is actually an interesting subject. I think we have to accept that we cannot truly fully portray other cultures from our own experiences or research. We can only go so far. When Ngugi writes “A Grain of Wheat”, he’s oscillating between two cultures, two peoples, the British Colonialists and the indigenous Kenyans. In my point of view, he does a good job, because he talks about premise from both sides. And the thing about the novel is that even though it is written by an African, if you put sentiment aside, you can understand the actions of both sides.

What I am saying is that, “Writing the Other” is not easy but I think with the necessary experience of the otherness, one can do a good job.

For reference, “A Wreath for Udomo” by Peter Abrahams also explores this concept.

I believe one should use their writing to communicate something, if it is a bias, or the avoidance of a bias, let it be done. Or we must ask, do we write to please the other, or to reveal the other in our eyes?

Hello Nikolas,
Thanks for your questions. I also wrestle with the subject of writing the “other”, and I don’t think that there are easy answers to your questions. Since you lived in Uganda, you may be a bit familiar with the politics of the country. There was a time I was writing about the Northern Uganda civil war, and I constantly interrogated myself what legitimacy I had to write about a war that for the most part the Southern part of the country (where I come from) really ignored.
That is all to say that regardless of the platform, the themes, the geographical differences, the subject of “otherness” is not easy to tackle. I am glad that Joel mentions Ngugi’s book. I find it very honest in the way he writes about the colonialists and the colonized. You may also want to read one his plays “I will Marry when I want.”

Anyway, when I think about the whole subject of “otherness” what comes to mind for me is; how would you define the “other”? I think the discomfort or even fear of how to talk about the “other”, to write about the “other” is a relationship complex in which we see someone who is different from us maybe as an object or as a means to an end. But, what would happen if we see the “other” as another “I”? Would that affect the way we would want to talk about them, to represent them in our work, in our writing? Wouldn’t that relationship or view of the other maybe take on a spiritual dimension? You have probably heard of the “Ubuntu”/”Obuntu” (Humanness) philosophy of “I am because we are, and because we are, therefore I am”.

I think we live in a world that constantly teaches that we are better off by denying the humanity of others. But in the process of that denial, we end up losing our own humanity before we have even had a chance to know who we really are. The question then is, how can we be comfortable writing about the other when we have lived in denial of our own humanness? In a sense, (I think) when we are writing about the other, we are asking ourselves to be one with another “I” (The other). The guilt then becomes our “safe” vantage point, which preserves us from the real commitment of being one with the “other”.

Deborah, I identify with the way you say living in the US influenced your view of the corruption in Uganda. Looking at the effects of unregulated aid for the developing world, did you develop a deeper appreciation for Uganda; a deeper sympathy for its status quo perhaps? A deeper understanding of how the country came to what it is now? Did Uganda still feel like the same home? Do you feel your writing is more or less defensive of Uganda, or just more objective? I find that this state of homelessness makes me less passionate about my original home and more, well, logical about it. More realistic even. When I did a blog about an internship in Cape Town, I was criticized for nearly mistaking the Cape to be the real Pearl of Africa. How unpatriotic of me! I was told. Before the internship, I would gladly write stanzas about Uganda’s natural beauty, the source of the Nile and all, and was quick to recite our ‘gifted by nature’ mantra to any listening visitor. But now, all I see is deteriorating natural beauty going to waste because of generations of Ugandans that have no idea what to do with it. It’s amazing what changing places can do.

Thanks Crystal! I would love to read that blog! There is no denying that Uganda is incredibly beautiful! Whether it is the pearl of Africa or not, that is another matter. That was Winston Churchhill’s conclusion after visiting British’s colonies. Even before I lived outside Uganda, I knew that there had to be better ways of doing things. That became so clear when I lived in Kampala, especially. I had spent 18 years of my life living in the country side. There were systems that worked well for the community in which I was raised. Then I moved to Kampala, and all I could see was chaos, as if everyone was disregarding anything that was considered beautiful and worth preserving. I knew that, that was not the way things were supposed to be. Like you mention in your comment above, moving and living outside Uganda makes me more realistic about my “home” country. Our society is very complex, and I think as a people we have learned to handle ourselves with kid gloves, we have learned not to take responsibility and not to have agency in our own affairs. We have learned to apportion blame. We have learned to not work because the politics of “aid” teach us dependency. We have embraced it and made it our culture. Yet, amidst all this, there is a section of Ugandans who dedicate themselves to make change in their small ways amidst inconceivable challenges. Regardless of how messed up the systems are, I know that our country has so much potential, and therefore we should not give up on her.

Words in my favorite portrait as a girl, “You build a house with your hands, a home with your heart.” I agree Deborah that “homelessness” does indeed broaden our writings and as with the quote, the definition of home.

deborah,thnx for that brilliant piece.actually my nerves has been pulled to change places.hah…sometimes realising that home is where there is amother i get to miss certain interesting happenings,there is really great néed of changing places.oooh…that was fab.

Thanks to everyone for their deep and inspiring thoughts about “the other”. After reading your discussion I was thinking about the question, how much influence René Descartes “cogito ergo sum” might have on the European culture and way of thinking. To say that my own thoughts or doubts are proof that I and the world exist, is a very egocentric idea. I suppose, to think of yourself as “the center of the universe”, has a deep influence on your view of others.
Like Arthur Schopenhauer once has written: “Every ant thinks, that it is the center of the universe”. I wonder if you could say that is a typical (sorry for generalizing) European perspective. What do you think?Reference

Sure, european thinking and way(s) of perception(s) are deeply influenced by the insight (or cognition(!)) “cogito ergo sum”, so deep, that it is rooted in our everyday language (english, german, french, etc.). Do you know the sun-example?: When we say ” the sun shines’, we actually say ‘there is something/someone that/who is doing something’. In english we can even make it more precise by saying ‘the sun is shining’, an ordinary style (in german it would be a vernacular “Die Sonne tut scheinen” / “Die Sonne ist am Scheinen”). These languages do not allow us to think in a non-causal way, they deny us the way of thinking about something that is not acting because of its will, but nevertheless is existing/acting.
So, the so-called ‘logical subject’ is deeply-rooted in most european languages, despite the fact, that the so-called ‘cradle of european civilization’, the ancient greece, thought about subject and an ‘I’ in a different way. I think it was Plato (and therefore also Socratics) who interpreted ‘subject’ and especially ‘soul’ as a temporary status that only exists (and that’s the important difference) if it is longing for, or better, reaching at something.
In my simplified terms this is the huge difference in a concept of being, especially the diametrically opposition of one/me and the/an other. The difference of “I can state that there is an I, now I am able to recognize something/-one that/who is different from me” and “It is only possible to shape a (temporary?) I, if there is a tension between, or for, something(s)”.
It’s not really thought through, but I guess this is one of various ways concepts of transculturality want to overcome and reflect the always hierarchical understanding of a european mode of perceiving world/the other…

I forgot to enquire:
Deborah, I looked up Ubuntu and found out that it is a word in Zulu – is there a philosophical movement behind?
And could you find parallels between the ‘ubuntuan’ way of perceiving an I and the way I tried to describe Platos definition (something like an I, that’s only existing because of its longing and/or reaching for something/an other)?
Are you familiar with Zulu? Is the underlying structure very different from the concept I draw of (most) European languages? And if so, would you say, that this idea of humanity is equally rooted in this language as the craze for subjectivization is in most Europeans? (is your Zulu-example exemplary/paradigmatic for other african languages?)
And to ask an abstract question to everyone:
How is ‘writing the other’ in languages, that don’t deal with that strict binary construction? Does that question even arise in this case? Does east-African oral poetry give a hint to that?

Tom, Greetings. You are right, Ubuntu is a Zulu word. But it is not confined only to the Zulu language, it is a word that comes from “Bantu”. Bantu is a group of linguistically related people who occupy the parts of East, Central and Southern Africa. The common characteristic of this group of people is that in their languages they use the word “ntu” or “tu” or sometimes written as “ndu” or “du” to mean people or a person. The prefix for “a person” is “(mu)ntu” or “(omu)ntu” or “(umu)ntu” or “mutu”. The prefix for “people” is “Ba” = “Bantu” etc.
Yes, indeed there is a philosophical movement behind “Ubuntu” or ”Obuntu” (as pronounced in my first language, Runyankore)
This philosophy of “Ubuntu” (“Human kindness”/ “Human goodness”) was especially popularized by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
The philosophy of “Ubuntu”/”Obuntu” means that to be human is to be a collective, to belong to a community, to be an “ALL”. Not that an individual loses their individuality, but that when a part of the collective or community is affected, is suffering; the individual suffers and is equally/automatically affected. “The belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects ALL humanity”. In other words, an individual CANNOT live/exist without the “ALL”, and the “ALL” cannot be without the individual. The two cannot be separated. Thus, the interpretation of “Ubuntu”/”Obuntu” is “I am because we are, or we are because I am.”
I don’t speak any language in the Southern part of Africa, but I know that the idea of “Ubuntu”/”Obuntu” is basically the same among the Bantu speaking people. This idea is for example deeply rooted in Runyankore, Kinyarwanda, Luganda languages.
Something I would like to share that may sound far fetched to the topic at hand but, which I find quite related to this idea of “Ubuntu”; it is the way some people in Africa use three stone fire for their cooking needs. This is where three rocks/stones usually equal in size are placed circularly (depending on the size of the pot or cooking container, the circle can be small or relatively big. Also, the size of the rocks will depend on the size of the pot). Fire is built inside the circle space and a cooking pot or container sits on the three rocks, generally hanging well above the fire. The pot will not hold if one or two rocks are missing. The pot will be tilted if the rocks are placed haphazardly. The pot will not hold if any of the rocks is larger or smaller than the other rocks. The pot will not hold if any of the rocks is not as firm as the rest of the rocks. Whatever happens to the rocks, any of the rocks, will affect the pot and whatever happens to the pot will affect the rocks.
Runyankore or any of the languages I have listed above that I am familiar with for example, don’t have gender specific pronouns. I think that is something that speaks to the idea of “We are because I am or I am because we are”.
There are many cultures and languages that occupy the Eastern part of Africa, and I hope that my fellow writers can give their views here on cultures they are familiar with. But, to specifically speak about my own cultures folklore and oral literature, it is very much similar to what Mariya shares in her post. Even in our epic poetry, there isn’t just ONE heroic character. One person may be a hero in one moment and another in another moment, and by the end of the poem, you have a thousand heroes.
Based on this, do you find any parallels in Plato’s definition of the “I” with the “Ubuntu” philosophy?
Sorry, this is a lengthy and long-winded response, but I hope that somewhere inside this rambling you will find an answer to your question(s).

Wow Deborah, your story has resonated with many of us. Most importantly, travels broadens the mind and writing too. I only became grateful about Uganda when I looked at it from afar.

The concept of home is really abstract. It’s interesting how it’s simultaneously be negative when thinking of homelessness, mostly positive and even ambiguous. It means so many things all at once; where you hang your hat, where your old room is, where your loved ones hang out and celebrate their lives. Personally, I’m not sure any more how to explain it without talking about my own body. But whenever I feel the bump of a pothole, or brightly coloured fruit piled high on tables, I feel at home.

Home is the expectation of familiar comforts. Home cooking. Speaking in my mother tongue. It is rootedness, in the sense of a physical place where I trace my ancestry. This is a privilege which few many people are losing considering the nature of capitalism. For instance every time I travel back to Northern Uganda, I’m comforted by the thought of knowing where the bones of my ancestors are interred. And yet there is always the fear that some investor might convert that into a plantation.

Exile and travel can unravel certain fixed ideas of home. Fortunately, they also expand that sacred idea of physically being rooted within a culture. If one were to dare fall in love, you would see for yourself how love can play naughty tricks on the idea of settling down to make a home somewhere new. (Being welcome in many homes?)

In the last decade I’ve done a fair amount of travel. These days home is the comfort of my own skin. For it’s incredibly unsettling to be in a new place with different cultures. It makes the awareness of being unhomed very acute. Some people call this homesickness, others call it culture shock. Usually it’s inherent in anxieties brought on by visa application processes, which can be nightmarish. Then the ritual passing through transit terminals, adjusting to different time zones, and reorienting the mind to differences in meaning, shapes and understanding of coded behaviour. All this reinforces a feeling of being unhomed or ‘homeless’. One thing I missed most when I lived in Tokyo was spontaneous laughter in the streets. But I found yam, pumpkin, and okra in my local market, so I could still home cook to keep the comfort of Uganda.

Hey Sophie,
Thank you for taking the time to read this post and for sharing your thoughts with us. You paint your words so beautifully, and your idea about home/lessness is something I want to take with me wherever I will lead my body, or wherever my body will lead me to.
I absolutely identify with your idea of home and one’s own body (with all its senses and more) as being inseparable. That is why I think it is fascinating for me to see how my own body adjusts or refuses to adjust whenever I take it to a new place or subject it to the “unfamiliar” (well, what is familiar?). Right now, as I write this, I am experiencing terrible allergies which I believe is due to abrupt weather changes. I might stay with this condition until the spring or summer, or it might clear sooner. But, it is definitely my body asking me what I am doing to it, and a reminder that I don’t do well with the cold weather.
Speaking about the rituals of traveling, the security metal detectors, the daunting burden of visa applications etc. In addition to all that, I am always intrigued by the similarity of airport structures, airport rituals and airport images – (duty free shops, coffee shops, tired passengers, rushing passengers, queues, booths, newspaper stands, bathrooms) In many ways they make me wonder whether I have departed at all. There is always a strange feeling in me as if I am always arriving and never quite leaving. It is as if these familiar images are always following me. As if the airport I left somewhere is the same airport I am finding at my destination.
When you mention “homesickness”, I remember there was a time the things that used to drive me nuts about Kampala were the ones I missed the most; the crazy boda-boda riders, the organized chaos in our taxi parks, and potholes on Kampala Road. Of course, there were other things I missed like hugs, deep belly laughter, and speaking in some of Uganda’s indigenous languages.
I think, now I know that my home/lessness inhabits my body, and I can’t separate the two.

Deborah, having lived as a nomad for the last five years, I share quite a number of experiences with you. My recollection of all these encounters is that home is a concept, feeling, not a geographically confined location. I have come to understand and appreciate language as a site where sensibilities sociality, curiosity, tolerance, being, and living commune. The idea of home or homelessness is weaved in the multiple ways in which we interlace with a miscellany of languages, and the meaning and expression that we construct (or derive) from being caught up in this cobweb. I would like to hear your experiences about how language has defined, undermined, compromised, refined, re/configured your sense of home(lessness) in all your migratory undertakings. Does home(lessness) have any location in your oscillatory ‘linguisticity’?

Dear Mabingo,
Wonderful to hear your thoughts! How is your nomadic life in Australia going?
It is so interesting that you ask me about language especially at this time when I am living and working in a country whose language I unfortunately don’t speak. Language, I find shapes our being, how our brain functions, how our bodies move and gesture, what our eyes catch and what our ears are tuned to.
In one of my comments above, I mentioned how my indigenous languages force themselves at the forefront of my writing whenever I am far away from these languages. I find that when I am not speaking these languages or interacting with them in anyway, they will manifest themselves at night, in my dreams. In many ways, I think that signifies the rootedness they have made in my body, and therefore a constant presence of who I am, of what defines me and therefore of what “home” may be to me.
As you know, I use different languages in my writing, and there have been many moments where questions of translating texts, expressions, phrase from some of the African languages that I use into English. In some cases, I have found myself doing this, but in the end the original intended meaning is lost or it turns into a watered down version of what I really wanted to say. In those moments, my fallback is to read and re-read the words of Chinua Achebe “The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience.” And I find my balance again.
On the flip side, this has taught me to think outside of my comfort zone and figure out ways and means to translating meaning. For someone reading the text, that is easy, because meanings and interpretations may be found in footnotes and appendices. But, in a performance, I have to think of other ways of not losing my audience. Again, Chinua Achebe guides me; “Let no one be fooled by the fact that we may write in English, for we intend to do unheard of things with it.” And I truly do and have done so many “unheard of things” with the English language.
I have so many anecdotes to share where language has been a stepping-stone or stumbling block in my writing, as well as in my migrations.

Good morning, Tom, I will inhabit a part of this ‘everyone’ for the question at hand; especially because it is an enquiry that concerns many of us and lies at the heart of struggles to disband Euro-centric hegemonic structures. I am eager to hear Deborah’s take on this, and everyone else’s of course. I find answer to your question in Native American stories for children (in which you will never find one or three sons fighting three-headed dragons for the hand of one princess; the characters will never stand at a juncture with three roads, and their ‘quests’ don’t involve golden apples, nor do they resolve in a three-staged period). Instead, these stories follow their own rhythm (which points at a different narrative construction and is great for contesting the pattern of European individualistic quests). Sherman Alexie is great to read and watch here, for being swung between these two narrative dominions (his own inner contradictions reach a peak in the film ‘The Business of Fancy Dancing’; the poetry collection is a masterpiece as well). (Although Alexie does dissipate ‘the other’ when noting: ‘the thing that Columbus truly discovered is that in the absence of enemies we destroy our beloved’). Once you constitute that the binary pillars European modes of thinking to a great extent, you do ocean yourself to an openness of accepting that not only the prince doesn’t get the princess but that the prince wasn’t a prince on the first place (and never wanted a princess) (this is perhaps a fanciful example but it does correlate to our narrative constructions of I and the other). To rid myself of narrative (and not only) ceilings (and get a glimpse of bluer skies) I read Glissant (and greatly recommend it)!Reference

Hi Mariya, you’ve articulated perfectly what I think a good number of us are struggling with. False binaries. They seem to disproportionately underpin the concept of ‘otherness’, with regrettable consequences. Too often, they tend to negate or ignore common human values. It also further highlights the existential tensions within the cultures we have been raised in. Maybe the world is changing too fast, and we are inhabiting increasingly diverse spaces that require us to examine the relevance of expressions which we hold dear. Perhaps the other holds a mirror to us, and it can be real scary because that forces us to reckon with our own selves, our traditions, our history and identity. Yolanda Onghena says, “The more we doubt our own identity, the weaker it appears to us, and the greater our need to reinforce or reinvent it.” http://www.iemed.org/publicacions/quaderns/10/q10_181.pdf

Is this the same Glissant who talks about Creolisation as a counterpoint to the binary us vs them?

It’s difficult to speak equivocally about language and yet Ubuntu philosophy has become a global phenomenon. I think it helps to be mindful of the various language families in Africa in order to understand the local understanding of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is to a South African what Tenne is to a Ugandan of Luo heritage. Tenne means to bring together,to join, to unify. Here’s an illustration. Kidi means stone. Kenu is hearth. When someone says, “Ten kidi kenu”, it translates into bring the hearth stones together. There’s something practical and beautiful in the coexistence of disparate elements. In this case three different stones coming together to support the cooking pot. Following from Deborah’s excellent explanation, many communities have a similar concept, but it is approached through a world view unique to them. Even those nerds at Firefox created Ubuntu for Linux

I fully agree with you Deborah. With Ubuntu, the strain of otherness falls away, and humanism takes root. It urges us to break the silence on cultural blindness, which renders many of us unable to imagine the “other” as a potential “I”. I think this is the blindness that dares us to question the humanity of people who are different from us. Anyway, now that globalisation has brought us closer together, what concessions can we make to foster understanding? It’s interesting that this baby christened “Transcultural” is being mainstreamed right after the failure of Multiculturalism, Multi Kulti. More than anything, I hope it can foster understanding.

Last week Charlie Hebdo happened. PEGIDA and anti-PEGIDA marches took place. Boko Haram is on going, but quietly.

The burden of white guilt from colonialism to the current excesses of neoliberalism –in which we are all complicit, exists. But does guilt without responsibility even mean anything? I’ve heard people in my family ask several times. I reply that in my culture, ideally, there is no place for guilt when restorative systems of communal accountability exist to give substantial justice. If you’ve killed a person, you perform mato oput, if you’ve committed a crime you undergo moyo kom or riyu tal. These rituals restore the oneness that has been broken. I mentioned that there is a movement for reparations growing among Afrodescendant communities, maybe that can help with the guilt. I don’t know, may be this is a spiritual quest just like that which Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama and the Elders counsel about. Compassion.

At least we agreed that things would be better for all of us in the long run if we set more value in one another, by respecting humanity in full, in a meaningful and substantial way. And that’s largely a matter of global political will. Meaning that the powerful and the powerless negotiate their rights and responsibilities from an enlightened perspective. UN anyone? IMF? World Bank? Highly unlikely, but on the personal level my husband concluded, “So, we have to make this work?”, I nodded in agreement and said, “Hm hm.”

An enlightened perspective can save us from this “Crises of Representation” which Nikolas presents. Whenever I write something 2D, a friend of mine who is also in my writing group rolls her eyes and tells me something that goes like this, “Only journalists write monsters. Writers write human beings.” In other words no matter how monstrous or depraved a person may be, there are always itsy bitsy little details of their life that shows us us how human they really are.Reference

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Dear Deborah Asiimwe, I am allowed very much enthusiastically by this project, the wonderfully varied insights into very different social environments and manners of writing like yours and greet with a quotation of the author Sibylle Berg: „At home is where one reads obituaries. “ I held this first for a (successful) joke – but I think, it is more than this . . .

Hello Jutta Reichelt,
Thank you very much for your comment, and thank you for sharing Sibylle Berg quotation. I could not help but chuckle after reading it. Home being a place where one reads “obituaries” may sound very funny, but I think you are right, there is another layer of meaning to it. The act of reading obituaries in itself has a certain level of steadiness and calmness it brings, and these could be associated with the concept of home.

Thank you for this elaborate and thought-provoking text, Deborah (can you also let us know who is the author of these magnificent and intriguing images, please). Concerning the ‘place slippage’ or what you called ‘places sneaking into writing’: I am returned to the condition of experience (or Merleau Ponty’s bodies knowing the world). It is interesting that you say that some stories would have never uttered themselves into existence had you not visited certain places (here, how many stories hang as clippings from roofs and skies and futures?!?) If moving has bred (new) stories then it has a voice on its own (for me always in tune with some form and extent of nostalgia and melancholy). Yet, having left ‘my’ home almost ten years ago I could not fixate it into its corporeality (instead, I like to think of it as a condition, a moment, the most bare, intimate and elemental part of a given atmosphere: ‘“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home” Faulkner pens it down.) Therefore, I agree that places make their entries no matter how hard one tries to extricate imagination from their (and its) closures. Your text sounds rather positive, do you regret sometimes this ‘world’s homelessness’?

Very well put, Mariya Nikolova! Thank you for your comments and questions, and for touching on Merleau Ponty’s philosophy as well as sharing a quote from William Faulkner. My apologies for a tardy response. As Nikolas mentions below, I have been moving homes again, and I am currently trying to settle into “my new home”. I agree, moving has a voice of its own. I think that moving in itself is a story, and because of that, it has taken on a character of its own, and therefore its own distinct voice.
This “world’s homelessness” within the context of moving places, is a state of mind I believe. Do I regret it? I am fascinated by it. I am fascinated by the idea of departing, and arriving, and departing again. I am fascinated by how places have the capacity to embrace or be rejected. I am fascinated by stories that are born out of these experiences.
Thank you again for your deep thoughts on this subject!

Thank you for this poetic and invigorating response! I like the fact that you see the capacity of places in a positive light; I think I don’t have this quality and flood myself with imagining spaces which incapacitate (politically, socially) and start off from there (my thoughts I mean)

I remember coming back to Germany after one year of civil service in Uganda, wondering where all the people are. In rural areas the streets, the sidewalks, whole villages feel empty compared to the countryside in Uganda. My home where I grew up, went to school and had a bed all of a sudden felt unfamiliar, not “Home” to me. It’s strange and interesting when you start seeing the familiar inside from the outside, especially as a writer. Maybe you do not have to leave your home country and come back again to have this kind of feeling. A lot of literature deals with unfamiliarity in the so called familiar ground. But changing places maybe can help you gaining a certain kind of distance towards the material you are writing on. There is a huge potential of narration, language creativity and fun in the ability to see familiar grounds from outside. As a German you understand what I mean by watching Tom Hanks talking about the German Autobahn at the David Letterman Show:

Deborah is actually changing her place once again by taking a plane to Germany right now. But soon she will be on her desk again to answer your questions. For now: The images are each linked to this great artist: http://www.iconsofametropolis.com/the-artworks/

You can also check incoming comments on the right side of Deborah’s Input throughout this week – thats where the writers push her thoughts further. You are welcome to interact in these discussions too!

I relate a lot with what Mariya said ” If moving has bred (new) stories then it has a voice on its own (for me always in tune with some form and extent of nostalgia and melancholy)”.

I think regardless the number of times spaces change, there is always an anchor into the one place that we call home and this affects our writing because new spaces will be viewed in some sort of relation to home.

When Deborah writes the play, I believe she is looking at home in a comparison to where she has lived. And home may not neccessarily be a good place; of good memories; I think it is a place that has a Genesis/Eden factor about it. A place we instinctively knew. A place we grew up or were formed in.

” If a writer is to write from their gut, do they even need to think about these things?”

This is an important question. I would like to know what everyone else thinks.

Debs, so true! I wonder if homelessness can be a choice. If, perhaps we don’t find a place with love, warmth and comfort, we feel we are homeless. Home suggests comfort and contentment and yet the world moves us to states of restlessness as well, we’re always searching. I wonder, when do we ever find what we’re searching for? I also believe that wide travel enables us to be more respectful and mindful of others and to realize the universe belongs to a billion others and to be good stewards of the earth. Often, it’s my internal reaction to these external truths that keeps me writing.

Thanks, Bev! I think we are conditioned to associate great and positive things with the concept of home. I agree with Mariya. Home is a paradox, and that is not a terrible thing. I think if we were to “find” what we are “searching” for, we would not be writing anymore. Everyday, I am reminded that the world is bigger than my neighborhood, than my street, than anything my brain can contain. There is joy and restlessness in knowing that.

I agree that traveling expands the vastness which pushes under ribcages, and minds, and some stories, too. But I cannot say that home is always a place of well-being; rather a space of being itself (Camus would exclaim here ‘“If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there.” ). As much as I am devoted to what is contained in the noun/verb/adjective ‘home’ I cannot escape its immanence and burden: it’s the place in which we cease to be strangers; it is a ‚when’ of the world resonating its pulse in ours; there: we matter; we are; broken or uncut, with bruises and beating wings, and depths of value and being lost-s. Thus, home is (inevitably) in opposition with what isn’t there and the ‘wheres’ which don’t contain us; forget us, and hell us too. Perhaps, this is a part of home’s idealistic connotation: it implies that we are never absent; that the wooden floor still draws circles and circles of rainbows with the footsteps my five-year-old self; that there is a face to reflect my patches of laughter (my mother’s or mirrored or someone whose name I have forgotten); and too, I could go back and ‘be’ for the trace of my being still rests in my grandmother’s chair. Here, if I think of home I wouldn’t want to neglect the fact that every idea and imagination of it is intimately and ultimately connected to me; in or out of it, my being births it and lets it die, and too re-lives it and re-leaves it a thousand times

As with Mariya, Bremen is my “second home”, with the difference that I left my first one – Ireland – not ten, but forty years ago. Since then I have lived in two communities and two languages – the language of my parents and the language of my wife and children. This means, of course, that I not only have two homes, which I take to be a great enrichment of my life and especially my writing, but also two “others”. On the one hand, flying into Belfast over small green fields is flying home, but so is returning to Bremen – you can actually see our house from the plane as it lands. On the other hand, however, as I think Nikolas has pointed out elsewhere, this “otherness” – the stranger’s view – is vital to writers. It is, in my opinion, only by seeing the familiar as “other” that we can write in an original way. So I’m very grateful to my two homes and my two “others”.

Hi Ian, do you think you say the same things in English and in German? Does something get lost in-between? And if so, could fragments of personality/character be translated and mis-translated in such ‘double existence’? I ask you this because I feel how different I ‘sound’ (with regards not merely to the acoustic traits but also the meaning of my articulations) while ‘translating’ myself. I will be very interested to know what you think

Dear Mariya, Before I reply directly, I just want to say how much I am enjoying this thread; thanks, Deborah, for initiating it. Yes, Mariya, my voice, my music and my images are very different in English and German; in some ways I’m two different writers. As it happens, today I have been translating an English poem into German prose. It contains the line, “Regret strokes my skin like nettle feathers”, a line I was quite pleased with. Yet, however hard I try to get a decent translation, it ends up as pure kitsch in German. It may (?) have something to do with the fact that German is a much more explicit, much less ambiguous language (and culture). (Compare the very explicit translations of very ambivalent English-language film titles.) Hm, what do you think?

Thank you, Ian! I am glad that Mariya asked the question above.
English is not my first language, and I grew up in a home where two languages were spoken, and at school we were forced to speak English. I grew up dancing between three languages. In my writing life, and of course with moving places, I have found the languages of my childhood forcing themselves to the forefront of the way I tell stories, and I have often wondered whether I am a “different” writer depending on the language I am thinking in at that time. Thank you for sharing your experience.

I followed your talk about writing in different languages. Thank you so much for this inspiring discussion. I have a lot of respect for writers, who are able to write in different languages. For me, the biggest challenge of this project is: to write all my texts in English. I guess, my writing is getting much simpler now. Usually, when I write in German, I´m very strict with my style, with the use of adjectives, sentence-structure, repetitions, punctuation, rhythm and so on. Now, the problems are more basic. I have to think a lot about grammar, I´m looking for words all the time, I have to think about phrases I love in German, but I´m not sure if it is possible to translate them into English, or if it just doesn’t make any sense.

Beyond that, I have to take the risk that I´m going to publish a text in this blog where other people could discover mistakes I haven’t recognized as such. Usually, I am very strict with that too. Even if I have finished my texts, I read them again and again before I publish them (there could be a very tiny mistake hiding anywhere). To be honest, it annoys me every time I read a published text of mine and I discover a misspelling or a comma in the wrong place.

What about you? In all the languages you use do you have the same strict rules when you write a text? Is there one language, you feel the most comfortable with? Is there anything special you like more when writing in German, English, Bulgarian or Swahili? Is there anything you miss in one of these languages, if you compare it to the others?

Good morning, Jens, thank you for raising the question of grammar. I guess I have always been fascinated by experimental attempts to exit the closures of language but ever since stumbling upon the radical statements (in both political and ethical sense) of NourbeSe Philip this has shot fire up and in and directs much of my academic and creative work. So, grammar is a concept I think about a lot (and try not to think at the same time). Of course, breaking grammar in Philip’s work is a political earthquake. As for me, I do feel the burden of language and sometimes feel claustrophobic having to express myself in and within one (something which has to do probably with the fact that I learn and unlearn in English (not my mother tongue), live in German (‘y’ deliberately omitted; not my mother tongue) and hurt in Bulgarian (or what is left of my mother tongue)). This spills on my work, of course (here, an example: https://soundcloud.com/mariya-dimitrova-nikolova/cutmp3 ) there are rougher erasures which I overcome at the moment but basically my love for writing (and performing) slam, and poetry as a whole is breaking on its self. It will be very interesting to hear whether Ian and Deborah experience similar contradictions

Hello Jens,
There are number of things that you have touched on, that resonate with me. I notice that when I am writing in Runyankore which is my first language, I am very strict the way I use it. The way the rhythm of it sounds, its poetry and the flow of the words. I also find myself using several words/expressions until I get what feels and sounds right. What is interesting though is that, once I feel I have got everything right, I am not afraid to go back into the text and break the rules of the language. This is also true for the other languages spoken in Uganda that I sometimes bring into my writing. For the English language, especially when it is creative writing, I am mainly concerned with where the story is set, and the characters I am writing about. In most cases, my characters will guide on how to use the language because their speech patterns, their background and who they are will really determine on how they speak. I want to say that I am not afraid to break rules when dealing with creative writing. However, like you I get obsessed with getting EVERYTHING “right” when I am dealing with other kinds of writing that are none-creative.
For me, when it comes to language, I think there are several writers residing in me depending on what I am writing.

Hello Mariya,
I forgot to say thank you for mentioning NourbeSe Philip. I´m not familiar with her work, but what you mentioned and what I read about her work sounds very interesting. Even this tiny example, I found on wikipedia I like:
“… and English is / my mother tongue / is / my father tongue / is a foreign lan lan lang / language / l/anguish / anguish…”
Also, thank you for the link to an example of your own work. I enjoyed listening to the audio clip. So, you write poems and perform them on slams regularly? And: Do you have any favourite spoken word artists?

Hello Deborah,
Thank you so much for sharing your experiences. I´m fascinated by your opportunities to work with all these languages. Yes, you´re right, you have to distinguish between creative writing and non-creative. To think about grammar rules and spelling during the creative process would block your creativity. And I guess, there might be several writers residing in me, too.

Hi Jens, thanks for taking the time to read/listen to these things. Philip is grandiose, so as many people get to know her work, as many worlds will collapse, and that is for a good reason. I perform my slam pieces, yes, but only if the whole slam is held in English (otherwise, I write for some surrealist’s blogs and magazines but only to avoid spilling my monsters to random people in the street; slamming bursts to the same effect, then night comes, and night comes again, and I can sleep. Monster-less)

Dear Ian, thank you, once again you draw a field with impossible flowers. Being two writers at once, yes, what an inner contrast, what a great misery and bliss! I agree with you, some ideas cannot be translated (and indeed, what a beautiful line). I don’t know whether this has to do with German’s explicit physique, i.e. that the dichotomy happens merely within language itself. I have different things to say in English, different in Bulgarian, too, which, I believe, has nothing to do with the fact that more people would understand me (if they!) in the first, and less in the second. Here, of course, I cannot omit the often overwhelming touch to texts such as Ette’s ‘ZwischenWeltenSchreiben: Literaturen ohne festen Wohnsitz’ or some, albeit puzzling, of Bhabha’s. Perhaps, the more apparent the contradictions and edges of split spaces (internal, primarily) become, the closer and yet further one gets to their inert and ‘translatable’ origin-territories. One is here, and there, and nowhere in particular; and too, joins these spaces with the distressing compulsion of imagination. As Y. Roshi said: ‘the fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there’. Perhaps, being these two writers you are the writer you yearned to be deep down and up high.

Thanks, Deborah, and thanks to everybody fueling this interesting discussion on home and writing. Before sharing a few thoughts of mine with you, I would like to quote a passage from the poem “Counterpoint”, written by the famous Palestian poet Mahmoud Darwish. This poem depicts a lyrical dialogue between him and Edward Said, the postcolonial scholar and author of “Orientalism” and “Cultural imperialism”, and to me, these lines perfectly fit into our discussion of writing under the tensions of moving, exile and so-called “otherness” in a foreign context.

“On the wind, he walks,
and in the wind, he knows who he is.
The wind has no roof; the wind has no house,
the wind is a compass pointing to the stranger’s North.

He says: I am from there. I am from here.
I am not there and I am not here.
I have two names, which meet and part,
and I have two languages.
I forget which of them I dream in.
I have English for writing, obedient in words.
I have also a language in which heaven speaks to Jerusalem:
silver-stressed, and it does not obey!

I said: And identity?
He said: Defense of the person. Identity is the daughter of birth,
but in the end, the invention of its owner,
not an heirloom from the past.
I am manifold. (…)
So carry your home country wherever you go. (…)

He loves a country, and travels from it.
He loves traveling to anything,
and in free travel between cultures,
those who study human essence
may find space enough for all.”

As Deborah mentions, the process of “making homes” and “finding oneself” in different contexts is an essential part of writing and living under the conditions of traveling and moving. The dynamics of distance push the writer to reflect or even change his or her perspectives and attitudes, the crossing of social and environmental limitations also means to shake the “normality” one got used to.

As writing can be understood as a mode of perception and reflection, as a product of interaction with and forming of the certain reality one is facing, each change of place causes a fundamental change of text.

The privilege to move freely between cultures and contexts, as described in the poem, enables a person to experience a multiplicity of perspectives, writings and homes, too. As much as identity can be multiple, home can be as such.

I think, a writer is lucky to have an additional privilege: By writing texts, she can find herself more easily and settle down through her well-known rituals of writing. In that sense, making homes could mean: writing homes.

When I read Deborahs fascinating input and all the inspiring comments about the concept of home and homelessness. I realized (for the second time), that I for myself don’t feel homelessness any more. When I started studying in Essen many years ago, it was never my home. On the one hand it was maybe still the small-town, where I grew up, where my family lived (and still lives) and where l had a lot friends. But, on the other hand it wasn´t, because that was not the place where I wanted to be any more. I was looking for a new place, and by chance I ended up in Bremen. Now I’ve been living here for 13 years and each year Bremen becomes more and more my home.

A few weeks ago after a party, it was nighttime. I was walking along the river, the moon was shining and I saw this little bridge. This bridge is very close to my flat, and suddenly I was overwhelmed by the emotion of coming home. I realized – in this intensity maybe for the first time –, that I have found a place, where I feel at home.

I really love the city of Bremen. In my little flat with the view of the sky and the river near by and all the lovely places and people around, all together make me feel at home. Even though I can write anywhere (I love to write while I´m traveling, sitting by the river or drinking a cappuccino in a coffee shop), my flat is the place where I write the most and where I finish my stories. My flat is my cozy cell. Here are all my books, my desk, my notebooks, my big window, my records, my sofa, my tea and my coffee machine to make a cappuccino. But, it´s not just a physical location with all that stuff, it´s more. Maybe it is what the sentence in Deborahs text describes: “a place where one can find love, protection, acceptance, security, peace, happiness, joy and a sense of belonging.“

Beverley, I don´t know if homelessness can be a choice, but I guess it takes a bit of luck to find a place where you feel at home. I am thankful for having this place, but sometimes I ask my self, if I´m getting too comfortable. In these moments, I think about going anywhere else to find new inspiration, because as all of you said traveling or living in different places has an inspiring influence on the way we think and write, it expands our horizon. However, to be honest, in the end I always reach the point where I realize that I don´t want to give up my home.

Is “homelessness” the zeitgeist of our times? In her book “The New World Literature”, the German critic Sigrid Loeffler has argued that all the great post-1945 literature has been one of dislocation, hybrid personalities and so on. I agree with Jens (and not just about Bremen, which I also love!) that home is important, especially for writing. I, too, can – and do – write anywhere. But it always temporary, somehow still in the air, till I get home and type it up in my computer at home. P.S. With me, it’s Darjeeling, Jens, not cappuccino.

I guess the importance of something like a home for the process of writing has to do with really inhabiting a place, which means: leaving the common roads in your town, getting to know the stories of the place. Back in the days when I was living down south, I used to work in a shelter for homeless people (actually: the “real” homeless ones, not the metaphorical homeless). Knowing this small parallel world in my hometown had a big influence on my writing for a long time, because suddenly I understood, that there is a lot going on of which I didn’t knew for a long time, a completely different daily routine, a “sub-system”, which functioned according to its own rules. Not only did it change my view on society as a whole, but also my perspective on living in a city and telling stories about it.
Besides that, the word “home”, especially the german translation “Heimat” always makes me feel a bit uneasy. It makes me think not of the individual “home” but of the collective one, which is a battlefield for ideology still. So I guess I have something like a functional concept of home. But on the other hand I have to acknowledge that my writing, the images that come to my mind and the topics of my stories are all heavy influenced by the places I inhabit, especially the one I grew up.

you know the topic of “writing the other” is very important for my work too. I’m sitting on a novel about a german volunteer and an ugandan teenager who work and life with a japanese NGO and try to grow up in this transcultural mess. Reading you lines it seems there is a general problem in writing about the other, no matter where you are coming from. But writing about Uganda from a western point of view makes it, I think, even more complicated. Maybe even impossible. No matter the language, the topics or perspectives you choose. Since there is a western history (and presence) of reduced representation, “othering” and paternalism towards the african countries (greetings “Africa is a country”) you are on principal guilty to write another white and western novel about “Africa” that nobody is asking for. There is power of political construction. But there is power of aesthetic construction too. So maybe it is possible to write about “the other”. But certainly not without being guilty.
In my novel I try to write about this guilt. I do not try to write a novel. I rather try to throw a novel away.
In her “Talks on Writing Prose” Norah Bossong says: “We try to do evereything in a way that we can avoid feeling guilty about it. It is what has become the ‘good life’ here or let’s say the ‘virtuous life’.” I think she nailed it. The point is to remain guilty. No matter how often you admit the fact.

Or is that stupid? Are we done with that “Crises of Representation” by now? What do you think, Deborah? Last year in Uganda writers told me they are looking forward to read my novel, to see their very own country with eyes from the outside. And Ugandan writer Joel Benjamin Ntwatwa claims on Nyana Kakoma’s Blog “Sooo many stories”: “Art is art. The ongoing debate about what constitutes African literature and an African writer is unnecessary. When you ask me what constitutes African literature, I feel that already you have tried to make literature your slave. Should it not be literature that talks about African issues, or European issues or Gypsy issues? Why must art have a race? And why must the artist be forced to fit into that race? Why can’t literature simply be a partner or a worker? And not a slave? If I wrote poetry drenched with the ideals of Western Capitalism, would it make me an American poet? If I wrote with the mind of a Gazan citizen, would it make me a Gazan poet? Would my poetry be accepted as Gazan literature? Art can be used to favour your cause but should not be enslaved to it.”

First: as it is my first comment I have to say that the high leveled speed of response in this blog is impressive(!); and second: Thank you Nikolas for the possibility to tie in with this.
Our small Bremen-Group was talking about Ronalds ‘Walls and Borders’ in December at Bremen University, as one of us noticed that she was totally surprised as she realized that she is not addressed in this text. The text mentions physical, political and language borders she (and some others including me) never really thought about before, especially not about their meanings and importance for migration and diaspora in east africa. She/we (some of us) felt not addressed as white europeans/germans because of the naturalness the text speaks about these borders, not wasting any thought on explaining them to strangers. This naturalness of stating problems around these borders as normal as any other experiences with borders, created a gap in her/our perception, a gap between her/us and the text. This as an example – because it is this kind of gap that is one of the most interesting phenomena to me in reading, or to get in touch with a text. It is a gap that means not-understanding, that includes the impression of an ‘other’, something that is obviously different than what I expected. And by perceiving this obviousness I am able to talk about my so far hidden expectations (on the text). I love exploring such gaps, first: because the moments I can take a hold of such a gap are very rare but remarkable, second: they are one strange way to start a transcultural reading – transcultural reading as a method that involves parts of not understanding… something. I think it is quite a challenge not to bridge or fill such gaps (with ignorance, own thoughts…), but to take them as relevant pieces for… I’m losing concentration.
But I’m writing this because I have a rough concept in mind of what a transcultural reading can be as a method or a mode of reading, but also, with this concept in mind, I always wondered ‘Tom, what could be a transcultural mode of writing?’. As I read your lines ‘In my novel I try to write about this guilt. I do not try to write a novel. I rather try to throw a novel away.’ I got something like a brief glimpse of a that. Maybe because it reminds me of a simultaneously condensing (constituting…?) and crumbling (shattering…?) mosaic…
I’m looking forward to get a look at the first chapter of your novel! Do you experiment with the type face of your novel to get your efforts implemented?

I hope it is ok with you, that my comment is not a direct answer to your question(s).

thank you so much for your reply. You say it is the gap, the not understanding, that is one of the most interesting things to you in reading. I also like the opposite. When I read a book by a so called foreign writer about a so called foreign culture. And realise the we have a lot in common. That I do understand the desires of the characters. That the conflicts and topics of a story can easily be found find in my own – so called familiar – life. To be outright: I like both. When there is understanding and not understanding at the same time. Bridges and gaps. When I find it hard to bear the contradictions. For me this could be the space of transcultural reading and writing.

For me – there is a reason for not calling this blog “Bremen & Kampala – spaces of intercultural writing”. Since cultures – in my experience – are no static bubbles, not separated from each other, trying to “inter”act to overcome their differences and to discover their commonalities. I don’t know which shape “transculture” has. Maybe it’s a network or a bunch of strings. Maybe it has a structure similar to the infrastructure of the internet. Maybe it’s a lot of bubbles. Millions of bubbles. All of them cross-linked and influenced and permeated. Not cultures anymore. Maybe individuals. Also bade of bubbles, full of differences and similarities and everything in between at the same time.

Sometime I try to look at this whole “writing the other” topic by putting the definition of culture into focus. One could say: “No, it’s completely not possible to write about the other! The other is too foreign!” His definition of cultures may be (over) static. There is no movement between cultures. There is foreignness on this side and familiarity on the other side. Now, one could say: “Yes, it’s completely possible to write about the other! The other is just like us!” His definition of cultures may be (over) dynamic. There are no differences between cultures. We are all the same.

In my writing I try to find a way between these (over) static and (over) dynamic definitions of cultures. To put the word “culture” at least in bracket. Or putting the word “trans” in front of it. Finding out what this whole thing looks like.

Nikolas, “writing the other” is actually an interesting subject. I think we have to accept that we cannot truly fully portray other cultures from our own experiences or research. We can only go so far. When Ngugi writes “A Grain of Wheat”, he’s oscillating between two cultures, two peoples, the British Colonialists and the indigenous Kenyans. In my point of view, he does a good job, because he talks about premise from both sides. And the thing about the novel is that even though it is written by an African, if you put sentiment aside, you can understand the actions of both sides.

What I am saying is that, “Writing the Other” is not easy but I think with the necessary experience of the otherness, one can do a good job.

For reference, “A Wreath for Udomo” by Peter Abrahams also explores this concept.

I believe one should use their writing to communicate something, if it is a bias, or the avoidance of a bias, let it be done. Or we must ask, do we write to please the other, or to reveal the other in our eyes?

Hello Nikolas,
Thanks for your questions. I also wrestle with the subject of writing the “other”, and I don’t think that there are easy answers to your questions. Since you lived in Uganda, you may be a bit familiar with the politics of the country. There was a time I was writing about the Northern Uganda civil war, and I constantly interrogated myself what legitimacy I had to write about a war that for the most part the Southern part of the country (where I come from) really ignored.
That is all to say that regardless of the platform, the themes, the geographical differences, the subject of “otherness” is not easy to tackle. I am glad that Joel mentions Ngugi’s book. I find it very honest in the way he writes about the colonialists and the colonized. You may also want to read one his plays “I will Marry when I want.”

Anyway, when I think about the whole subject of “otherness” what comes to mind for me is; how would you define the “other”? I think the discomfort or even fear of how to talk about the “other”, to write about the “other” is a relationship complex in which we see someone who is different from us maybe as an object or as a means to an end. But, what would happen if we see the “other” as another “I”? Would that affect the way we would want to talk about them, to represent them in our work, in our writing? Wouldn’t that relationship or view of the other maybe take on a spiritual dimension? You have probably heard of the “Ubuntu”/”Obuntu” (Humanness) philosophy of “I am because we are, and because we are, therefore I am”.

I think we live in a world that constantly teaches that we are better off by denying the humanity of others. But in the process of that denial, we end up losing our own humanity before we have even had a chance to know who we really are. The question then is, how can we be comfortable writing about the other when we have lived in denial of our own humanness? In a sense, (I think) when we are writing about the other, we are asking ourselves to be one with another “I” (The other). The guilt then becomes our “safe” vantage point, which preserves us from the real commitment of being one with the “other”.

Deborah, I identify with the way you say living in the US influenced your view of the corruption in Uganda. Looking at the effects of unregulated aid for the developing world, did you develop a deeper appreciation for Uganda; a deeper sympathy for its status quo perhaps? A deeper understanding of how the country came to what it is now? Did Uganda still feel like the same home? Do you feel your writing is more or less defensive of Uganda, or just more objective? I find that this state of homelessness makes me less passionate about my original home and more, well, logical about it. More realistic even. When I did a blog about an internship in Cape Town, I was criticized for nearly mistaking the Cape to be the real Pearl of Africa. How unpatriotic of me! I was told. Before the internship, I would gladly write stanzas about Uganda’s natural beauty, the source of the Nile and all, and was quick to recite our ‘gifted by nature’ mantra to any listening visitor. But now, all I see is deteriorating natural beauty going to waste because of generations of Ugandans that have no idea what to do with it. It’s amazing what changing places can do.

Thanks Crystal! I would love to read that blog! There is no denying that Uganda is incredibly beautiful! Whether it is the pearl of Africa or not, that is another matter. That was Winston Churchhill’s conclusion after visiting British’s colonies. Even before I lived outside Uganda, I knew that there had to be better ways of doing things. That became so clear when I lived in Kampala, especially. I had spent 18 years of my life living in the country side. There were systems that worked well for the community in which I was raised. Then I moved to Kampala, and all I could see was chaos, as if everyone was disregarding anything that was considered beautiful and worth preserving. I knew that, that was not the way things were supposed to be. Like you mention in your comment above, moving and living outside Uganda makes me more realistic about my “home” country. Our society is very complex, and I think as a people we have learned to handle ourselves with kid gloves, we have learned not to take responsibility and not to have agency in our own affairs. We have learned to apportion blame. We have learned to not work because the politics of “aid” teach us dependency. We have embraced it and made it our culture. Yet, amidst all this, there is a section of Ugandans who dedicate themselves to make change in their small ways amidst inconceivable challenges. Regardless of how messed up the systems are, I know that our country has so much potential, and therefore we should not give up on her.

Words in my favorite portrait as a girl, “You build a house with your hands, a home with your heart.” I agree Deborah that “homelessness” does indeed broaden our writings and as with the quote, the definition of home.

deborah,thnx for that brilliant piece.actually my nerves has been pulled to change places.hah…sometimes realising that home is where there is amother i get to miss certain interesting happenings,there is really great néed of changing places.oooh…that was fab.

Thanks to everyone for their deep and inspiring thoughts about “the other”. After reading your discussion I was thinking about the question, how much influence René Descartes “cogito ergo sum” might have on the European culture and way of thinking. To say that my own thoughts or doubts are proof that I and the world exist, is a very egocentric idea. I suppose, to think of yourself as “the center of the universe”, has a deep influence on your view of others.
Like Arthur Schopenhauer once has written: “Every ant thinks, that it is the center of the universe”. I wonder if you could say that is a typical (sorry for generalizing) European perspective. What do you think?Reference

Sure, european thinking and way(s) of perception(s) are deeply influenced by the insight (or cognition(!)) “cogito ergo sum”, so deep, that it is rooted in our everyday language (english, german, french, etc.). Do you know the sun-example?: When we say ” the sun shines’, we actually say ‘there is something/someone that/who is doing something’. In english we can even make it more precise by saying ‘the sun is shining’, an ordinary style (in german it would be a vernacular “Die Sonne tut scheinen” / “Die Sonne ist am Scheinen”). These languages do not allow us to think in a non-causal way, they deny us the way of thinking about something that is not acting because of its will, but nevertheless is existing/acting.
So, the so-called ‘logical subject’ is deeply-rooted in most european languages, despite the fact, that the so-called ‘cradle of european civilization’, the ancient greece, thought about subject and an ‘I’ in a different way. I think it was Plato (and therefore also Socratics) who interpreted ‘subject’ and especially ‘soul’ as a temporary status that only exists (and that’s the important difference) if it is longing for, or better, reaching at something.
In my simplified terms this is the huge difference in a concept of being, especially the diametrically opposition of one/me and the/an other. The difference of “I can state that there is an I, now I am able to recognize something/-one that/who is different from me” and “It is only possible to shape a (temporary?) I, if there is a tension between, or for, something(s)”.
It’s not really thought through, but I guess this is one of various ways concepts of transculturality want to overcome and reflect the always hierarchical understanding of a european mode of perceiving world/the other…

I forgot to enquire:
Deborah, I looked up Ubuntu and found out that it is a word in Zulu – is there a philosophical movement behind?
And could you find parallels between the ‘ubuntuan’ way of perceiving an I and the way I tried to describe Platos definition (something like an I, that’s only existing because of its longing and/or reaching for something/an other)?
Are you familiar with Zulu? Is the underlying structure very different from the concept I draw of (most) European languages? And if so, would you say, that this idea of humanity is equally rooted in this language as the craze for subjectivization is in most Europeans? (is your Zulu-example exemplary/paradigmatic for other african languages?)
And to ask an abstract question to everyone:
How is ‘writing the other’ in languages, that don’t deal with that strict binary construction? Does that question even arise in this case? Does east-African oral poetry give a hint to that?

Tom, Greetings. You are right, Ubuntu is a Zulu word. But it is not confined only to the Zulu language, it is a word that comes from “Bantu”. Bantu is a group of linguistically related people who occupy the parts of East, Central and Southern Africa. The common characteristic of this group of people is that in their languages they use the word “ntu” or “tu” or sometimes written as “ndu” or “du” to mean people or a person. The prefix for “a person” is “(mu)ntu” or “(omu)ntu” or “(umu)ntu” or “mutu”. The prefix for “people” is “Ba” = “Bantu” etc.
Yes, indeed there is a philosophical movement behind “Ubuntu” or ”Obuntu” (as pronounced in my first language, Runyankore)
This philosophy of “Ubuntu” (“Human kindness”/ “Human goodness”) was especially popularized by Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
The philosophy of “Ubuntu”/”Obuntu” means that to be human is to be a collective, to belong to a community, to be an “ALL”. Not that an individual loses their individuality, but that when a part of the collective or community is affected, is suffering; the individual suffers and is equally/automatically affected. “The belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects ALL humanity”. In other words, an individual CANNOT live/exist without the “ALL”, and the “ALL” cannot be without the individual. The two cannot be separated. Thus, the interpretation of “Ubuntu”/”Obuntu” is “I am because we are, or we are because I am.”
I don’t speak any language in the Southern part of Africa, but I know that the idea of “Ubuntu”/”Obuntu” is basically the same among the Bantu speaking people. This idea is for example deeply rooted in Runyankore, Kinyarwanda, Luganda languages.
Something I would like to share that may sound far fetched to the topic at hand but, which I find quite related to this idea of “Ubuntu”; it is the way some people in Africa use three stone fire for their cooking needs. This is where three rocks/stones usually equal in size are placed circularly (depending on the size of the pot or cooking container, the circle can be small or relatively big. Also, the size of the rocks will depend on the size of the pot). Fire is built inside the circle space and a cooking pot or container sits on the three rocks, generally hanging well above the fire. The pot will not hold if one or two rocks are missing. The pot will be tilted if the rocks are placed haphazardly. The pot will not hold if any of the rocks is larger or smaller than the other rocks. The pot will not hold if any of the rocks is not as firm as the rest of the rocks. Whatever happens to the rocks, any of the rocks, will affect the pot and whatever happens to the pot will affect the rocks.
Runyankore or any of the languages I have listed above that I am familiar with for example, don’t have gender specific pronouns. I think that is something that speaks to the idea of “We are because I am or I am because we are”.
There are many cultures and languages that occupy the Eastern part of Africa, and I hope that my fellow writers can give their views here on cultures they are familiar with. But, to specifically speak about my own cultures folklore and oral literature, it is very much similar to what Mariya shares in her post. Even in our epic poetry, there isn’t just ONE heroic character. One person may be a hero in one moment and another in another moment, and by the end of the poem, you have a thousand heroes.
Based on this, do you find any parallels in Plato’s definition of the “I” with the “Ubuntu” philosophy?
Sorry, this is a lengthy and long-winded response, but I hope that somewhere inside this rambling you will find an answer to your question(s).

Wow Deborah, your story has resonated with many of us. Most importantly, travels broadens the mind and writing too. I only became grateful about Uganda when I looked at it from afar.

The concept of home is really abstract. It’s interesting how it’s simultaneously be negative when thinking of homelessness, mostly positive and even ambiguous. It means so many things all at once; where you hang your hat, where your old room is, where your loved ones hang out and celebrate their lives. Personally, I’m not sure any more how to explain it without talking about my own body. But whenever I feel the bump of a pothole, or brightly coloured fruit piled high on tables, I feel at home.

Home is the expectation of familiar comforts. Home cooking. Speaking in my mother tongue. It is rootedness, in the sense of a physical place where I trace my ancestry. This is a privilege which few many people are losing considering the nature of capitalism. For instance every time I travel back to Northern Uganda, I’m comforted by the thought of knowing where the bones of my ancestors are interred. And yet there is always the fear that some investor might convert that into a plantation.

Exile and travel can unravel certain fixed ideas of home. Fortunately, they also expand that sacred idea of physically being rooted within a culture. If one were to dare fall in love, you would see for yourself how love can play naughty tricks on the idea of settling down to make a home somewhere new. (Being welcome in many homes?)

In the last decade I’ve done a fair amount of travel. These days home is the comfort of my own skin. For it’s incredibly unsettling to be in a new place with different cultures. It makes the awareness of being unhomed very acute. Some people call this homesickness, others call it culture shock. Usually it’s inherent in anxieties brought on by visa application processes, which can be nightmarish. Then the ritual passing through transit terminals, adjusting to different time zones, and reorienting the mind to differences in meaning, shapes and understanding of coded behaviour. All this reinforces a feeling of being unhomed or ‘homeless’. One thing I missed most when I lived in Tokyo was spontaneous laughter in the streets. But I found yam, pumpkin, and okra in my local market, so I could still home cook to keep the comfort of Uganda.

Hey Sophie,
Thank you for taking the time to read this post and for sharing your thoughts with us. You paint your words so beautifully, and your idea about home/lessness is something I want to take with me wherever I will lead my body, or wherever my body will lead me to.
I absolutely identify with your idea of home and one’s own body (with all its senses and more) as being inseparable. That is why I think it is fascinating for me to see how my own body adjusts or refuses to adjust whenever I take it to a new place or subject it to the “unfamiliar” (well, what is familiar?). Right now, as I write this, I am experiencing terrible allergies which I believe is due to abrupt weather changes. I might stay with this condition until the spring or summer, or it might clear sooner. But, it is definitely my body asking me what I am doing to it, and a reminder that I don’t do well with the cold weather.
Speaking about the rituals of traveling, the security metal detectors, the daunting burden of visa applications etc. In addition to all that, I am always intrigued by the similarity of airport structures, airport rituals and airport images – (duty free shops, coffee shops, tired passengers, rushing passengers, queues, booths, newspaper stands, bathrooms) In many ways they make me wonder whether I have departed at all. There is always a strange feeling in me as if I am always arriving and never quite leaving. It is as if these familiar images are always following me. As if the airport I left somewhere is the same airport I am finding at my destination.
When you mention “homesickness”, I remember there was a time the things that used to drive me nuts about Kampala were the ones I missed the most; the crazy boda-boda riders, the organized chaos in our taxi parks, and potholes on Kampala Road. Of course, there were other things I missed like hugs, deep belly laughter, and speaking in some of Uganda’s indigenous languages.
I think, now I know that my home/lessness inhabits my body, and I can’t separate the two.

Deborah, having lived as a nomad for the last five years, I share quite a number of experiences with you. My recollection of all these encounters is that home is a concept, feeling, not a geographically confined location. I have come to understand and appreciate language as a site where sensibilities sociality, curiosity, tolerance, being, and living commune. The idea of home or homelessness is weaved in the multiple ways in which we interlace with a miscellany of languages, and the meaning and expression that we construct (or derive) from being caught up in this cobweb. I would like to hear your experiences about how language has defined, undermined, compromised, refined, re/configured your sense of home(lessness) in all your migratory undertakings. Does home(lessness) have any location in your oscillatory ‘linguisticity’?

Dear Mabingo,
Wonderful to hear your thoughts! How is your nomadic life in Australia going?
It is so interesting that you ask me about language especially at this time when I am living and working in a country whose language I unfortunately don’t speak. Language, I find shapes our being, how our brain functions, how our bodies move and gesture, what our eyes catch and what our ears are tuned to.
In one of my comments above, I mentioned how my indigenous languages force themselves at the forefront of my writing whenever I am far away from these languages. I find that when I am not speaking these languages or interacting with them in anyway, they will manifest themselves at night, in my dreams. In many ways, I think that signifies the rootedness they have made in my body, and therefore a constant presence of who I am, of what defines me and therefore of what “home” may be to me.
As you know, I use different languages in my writing, and there have been many moments where questions of translating texts, expressions, phrase from some of the African languages that I use into English. In some cases, I have found myself doing this, but in the end the original intended meaning is lost or it turns into a watered down version of what I really wanted to say. In those moments, my fallback is to read and re-read the words of Chinua Achebe “The price a world language must be prepared to pay is submission to many different kinds of use. The African writer should aim to use English in a way that brings out his message best without altering the language to the extent that its value as a medium of international exchange will be lost. He should aim at fashioning out an English which is at once universal and able to carry his peculiar experience.” And I find my balance again.
On the flip side, this has taught me to think outside of my comfort zone and figure out ways and means to translating meaning. For someone reading the text, that is easy, because meanings and interpretations may be found in footnotes and appendices. But, in a performance, I have to think of other ways of not losing my audience. Again, Chinua Achebe guides me; “Let no one be fooled by the fact that we may write in English, for we intend to do unheard of things with it.” And I truly do and have done so many “unheard of things” with the English language.
I have so many anecdotes to share where language has been a stepping-stone or stumbling block in my writing, as well as in my migrations.

Good morning, Tom, I will inhabit a part of this ‘everyone’ for the question at hand; especially because it is an enquiry that concerns many of us and lies at the heart of struggles to disband Euro-centric hegemonic structures. I am eager to hear Deborah’s take on this, and everyone else’s of course. I find answer to your question in Native American stories for children (in which you will never find one or three sons fighting three-headed dragons for the hand of one princess; the characters will never stand at a juncture with three roads, and their ‘quests’ don’t involve golden apples, nor do they resolve in a three-staged period). Instead, these stories follow their own rhythm (which points at a different narrative construction and is great for contesting the pattern of European individualistic quests). Sherman Alexie is great to read and watch here, for being swung between these two narrative dominions (his own inner contradictions reach a peak in the film ‘The Business of Fancy Dancing’; the poetry collection is a masterpiece as well). (Although Alexie does dissipate ‘the other’ when noting: ‘the thing that Columbus truly discovered is that in the absence of enemies we destroy our beloved’). Once you constitute that the binary pillars European modes of thinking to a great extent, you do ocean yourself to an openness of accepting that not only the prince doesn’t get the princess but that the prince wasn’t a prince on the first place (and never wanted a princess) (this is perhaps a fanciful example but it does correlate to our narrative constructions of I and the other). To rid myself of narrative (and not only) ceilings (and get a glimpse of bluer skies) I read Glissant (and greatly recommend it)!Reference

Hi Mariya, you’ve articulated perfectly what I think a good number of us are struggling with. False binaries. They seem to disproportionately underpin the concept of ‘otherness’, with regrettable consequences. Too often, they tend to negate or ignore common human values. It also further highlights the existential tensions within the cultures we have been raised in. Maybe the world is changing too fast, and we are inhabiting increasingly diverse spaces that require us to examine the relevance of expressions which we hold dear. Perhaps the other holds a mirror to us, and it can be real scary because that forces us to reckon with our own selves, our traditions, our history and identity. Yolanda Onghena says, “The more we doubt our own identity, the weaker it appears to us, and the greater our need to reinforce or reinvent it.” http://www.iemed.org/publicacions/quaderns/10/q10_181.pdf

Is this the same Glissant who talks about Creolisation as a counterpoint to the binary us vs them?

It’s difficult to speak equivocally about language and yet Ubuntu philosophy has become a global phenomenon. I think it helps to be mindful of the various language families in Africa in order to understand the local understanding of Ubuntu. Ubuntu is to a South African what Tenne is to a Ugandan of Luo heritage. Tenne means to bring together,to join, to unify. Here’s an illustration. Kidi means stone. Kenu is hearth. When someone says, “Ten kidi kenu”, it translates into bring the hearth stones together. There’s something practical and beautiful in the coexistence of disparate elements. In this case three different stones coming together to support the cooking pot. Following from Deborah’s excellent explanation, many communities have a similar concept, but it is approached through a world view unique to them. Even those nerds at Firefox created Ubuntu for Linux

I fully agree with you Deborah. With Ubuntu, the strain of otherness falls away, and humanism takes root. It urges us to break the silence on cultural blindness, which renders many of us unable to imagine the “other” as a potential “I”. I think this is the blindness that dares us to question the humanity of people who are different from us. Anyway, now that globalisation has brought us closer together, what concessions can we make to foster understanding? It’s interesting that this baby christened “Transcultural” is being mainstreamed right after the failure of Multiculturalism, Multi Kulti. More than anything, I hope it can foster understanding.

Last week Charlie Hebdo happened. PEGIDA and anti-PEGIDA marches took place. Boko Haram is on going, but quietly.

The burden of white guilt from colonialism to the current excesses of neoliberalism –in which we are all complicit, exists. But does guilt without responsibility even mean anything? I’ve heard people in my family ask several times. I reply that in my culture, ideally, there is no place for guilt when restorative systems of communal accountability exist to give substantial justice. If you’ve killed a person, you perform mato oput, if you’ve committed a crime you undergo moyo kom or riyu tal. These rituals restore the oneness that has been broken. I mentioned that there is a movement for reparations growing among Afrodescendant communities, maybe that can help with the guilt. I don’t know, may be this is a spiritual quest just like that which Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama and the Elders counsel about. Compassion.

At least we agreed that things would be better for all of us in the long run if we set more value in one another, by respecting humanity in full, in a meaningful and substantial way. And that’s largely a matter of global political will. Meaning that the powerful and the powerless negotiate their rights and responsibilities from an enlightened perspective. UN anyone? IMF? World Bank? Highly unlikely, but on the personal level my husband concluded, “So, we have to make this work?”, I nodded in agreement and said, “Hm hm.”

An enlightened perspective can save us from this “Crises of Representation” which Nikolas presents. Whenever I write something 2D, a friend of mine who is also in my writing group rolls her eyes and tells me something that goes like this, “Only journalists write monsters. Writers write human beings.” In other words no matter how monstrous or depraved a person may be, there are always itsy bitsy little details of their life that shows us us how human they really are.Reference